I Killed Jane Austen

When I started this year, I had no idea what "Simply Me" meant. I knew I had to figure it out and start taking steps to getting closer to being Real or lose my silly little mind. I had no idea how dramatic that was going to be. I had no idea how swept away I had become by other people's lives and personalities. All my colors had gotten smeared and had run into everyone else's until they weren't mine anymore. All those roles we get thrown into as an adult can kind of take over if we let them. I had definitely let them. Now that I am figuring all this out, I am finding that the people who matter the most to me, the very people I was trying so hard to please by trying to be what I thought they wanted or needed, are the people who seem to like me & love me more now that I am working my way back. I am throwing out all the books, music, movies and ideas that tell me to be something else. I am going to stop being afraid of people, am not going to try to please people anymore & allow stronger personalities to bully me. I am going to defend my likes & not let anyone else decide what I should be. It might sound pitiful that a 42 year old woman is just now figuring this out, but I have always been one of those chameleon marshmallow personalities that tries to not rock the boat & does whatever to try to keep the peace. Unfortunately, this attracts bullies & people with strong personalities who set themselves up in my life and proceed to direct how I should live it and proceed to suck the life out of me. People who take up all the space in the room. My daddy & I spent my childhood trying to make my mom happy. So naturally I married someone & immediately handed over the reigns. If he or the kids didn't like my music I eventually just quit listening to it. After my three year old marched into the family room many years ago and faced me with hands on hips while I was trying to watch a Grand Ole Opry award ceremony and indignantly spat out the words, "Aaarrgh! Country music AGAIN?!", I sighed, got up, turned it off and never turned it back on again. All of their interests became mine & little by little everything I loved got pushed aside to make more room, until I woke up one day and realized I didn't recognize anything anymore and certainly wasn't enjoying any of it. I think I owe it to myself and Gaston, Tallulah, Pierre, Wolfgang & Hank to explore this and then tell them to move over a little and make some room. I know they won't mind. I do not blame anyone for this happening. I allowed the lifesuckers to invade my world and kill my spirit. People only have however much power over you as you allow them. I am the one who deemed myself unworthy and gave everyone permission to take over. But I have changed my mind. There are some things you need to know. I think two events last year really inspired this need to express myself, but only one I will share here. It made me begin to see how much I have embraced for the sake of "the homeschooling image" and being a Christian wife and mother and all the trimmings that come with that. It is true ...I did kill Jane Austen, but I swear it was in self defense. I shocked Tallulah a few months ago with the sudden declaration that I HATE JANE AUSTEN. There. I said it. No self-respecting homeschooling Christian mother could ever hate Jane Austen, but I, in fact, do. I thought my daughter was going to divorce me. But after many days of shocked depressed silence from her, it became apparent we were going to survive this new knowledge, she would one day come to forgive me & I started thinking about all the myriad of OTHER things I had adopted as my own that actually belong to my husband whom I love or to my children whom I adore. May I also say that my children have always been very generous and gracious in their loyalties to me and their attempts to honor me in their lives. I heard Tallulah & Pierre laughing about how they had both rabidly defended Thoreau's writings to someone only later to realize they had never read one word he had written but were responding to my avid devotion to him. So, I guess that is what love does sometimes, we take on some of the colors of the people around us and they ours. This makes us more colorful and we grow and expand into much more interesting people. This morning as I was writing this, Luna in her usual "kindred spirit mind-reading fashion" unknowingly sent me this quote by Sandra Day...

"We don't accomplish anything in this world alone... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of ones life and all the weavings of individual threads from one another that creates something"

Exactly! But somewhere along the way, I stopped using any of my own thread. Since I have always taught my children to be who they are and like what they like and have supported whatever their passion was, it is time to follow my own advice. I threw out a lot of interests in the name of parenting and marriage and homeschool. I miss them. I miss me. I have somehow acquired an elitist quasi-intellectual artsy facade that is simply not who I am. I miss football. I miss country music. I miss television. I think I owe it to my younger guys who are still at home and I owe it to myself to restore my own colors, maybe start with a fresh clean canvas. I don't want to feel smudged & unrecognizable anymore. Please forgive me, Miss Austen. I suspect you felt the same way at times.